The 36-year-old white man was one of the three suspects. He had already been convicted in February of the murder of Arbery by a Georgia judge, along with his also white co-defendants, his 66-year-old father Gregory McMichael and their 52-year-old neighbor William Bryan. The three suspects unsuccessfully invoked self-defense and have appealed the verdict.
During the first federal hearing, Marcus Arbery, the father of the murdered man, asked the judge to sentence the younger McMichael to life in prison. “These three devils have broken my heart to pieces. It cannot be repaired,” Marcus Arbery told the court. He also addressed the three suspects: “You hate black people.”
Father McMichael, a former police officer, and neighbor Bryan will also hear their sentences in federal court on Monday.
Grab a gun
Arbery was running through a neighborhood in Brunswick one February 2020 afternoon when the McMichaels decided to grab their guns, jump into a pickup truck and give chase. They thought Arbery looked suspicious and there had been a lot of break-ins recently, they said. Their neighbor Bryan joined them in his own pickup truck. Using his cell phone, he filmed Travis McMichael firing a shotgun at the unarmed Arbery at close range. The video of the incident appeared on social media months later.
No evidence has ever been found linking Arbery to burglary or theft in the residential area in question.
Arbery’s death was one of several cases that sparked mass protests against racial injustice and police brutality in the United States and beyond in the summer of 2020. The most famous case was the death of black man George Floyd of Minneapolis, Missouri.